GOV. JOHN SUNUNU: “Thank you very much. Let me just briefly tell you why I am a strong supporter of Governor Mitt Romney. When Governor Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, he truly was a conservative Republican governor. He took office, there was a $3 billion deficit, he turned that into a surplus by cutting spending—by truly cutting spending, reducing the number of people on the state payroll, cutting programs, and he did that without raising taxes and without borrowing any additional money for the state. He cut taxes nineteen times. He stood with the Citizens for Life, the right to life folks in Massachusetts when two terrible anti-life bills were passed. He stood with the traditional marriage people when the Supreme Court put forth the gay marriage decision in Massachusetts and he kept Massachusetts out of the cap and trade program—the regional greenhouse gas initiative. He stood up for conservative values as governor and I think that’s very important as we’re looking for somebody to undo the mess in Washington. Just by way of contrasts, let me just do a little bit here. Senator Santorum is a nice man. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a good friend, but frankly when he got to Washington, he got very Washingtonian. He fell in love with earmarks to the point where he is willing to say he was proud of being part of the earmark gang. And that increase in spending is a very serious problem—spending increased eighty percent while he was in the Senate. He is not a conservative on labor issues. He voted for—he voted against right to work laws in the Senate and he supported extending Davis-Bacon—two issues that are extremely important to conservative Republicans around the country. He joined with Senator Specter in supporting Judge Sotomayor when she was being put on the Appellate Court, now she ends up on the Supreme Court. And talking about joining Senator Specter, he joined with Senator Specter and Senator Mike DeWine in being the only three Republicans to join with Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer in voting for extending voting rights to felons and overriding state laws that prevented that. So it’s not only an extension of voting rights to felons that he supported with Mike DeWine and Arlen Specter but he was overriding state rights there again, a very non-conservative approach. And I do understand that the criticism that has been levied on this vote—restoring voting rights to felons by some of the supporters of the Romney camp—is one of the reasons, if not the biggest reason, why Mike DeWine has decided to now be a supporter of Senator Santorum. I really do think this is an important election to repair the damage that has been done to the country over the past three plus years, by election time, it’ll be basically four years of disaster. We need a strong candidate, like Mitt Romney, not a candidate who loves spending and frankly supports liberal labor causes and liberal social causes, like giving voting rights to felons as did Senator Santorum.”

CONGRESSMAN MIKE TURNER: “Good afternoon. I’m very proud to be supporting Governor Romney because of his record of competence, experience, and accomplishment. We have a president who’s currently governing from a podium. The real work of governance and the issue of job creation and cutting spending is not being done. Those are the important areas where Governor Romney has the experience in both job creation and in reining in spending, knowing how to balance a budget. His experience spans both business and government, and of course with the Olympics, which has shown him to take a project from start to finish and all free—business, government, and his work in the Olympics—show skills in economic development and fiscal responsibility. It’s time that we had a president that knows how to deliver and Governor Romney’s record of experience and management capability shows that he can do that. One of the things with Senator Santorum, he’s not gotten on even every ballot. He won’t even be on all the ballots across the country, including Virginia. That tends to be a basic level of—a test of competence in running for president is to be able to get on the ballot everywhere and to reflect whether or not you can govern as president. I know Senator Santorum has looked to his record as a consultant and everyone knows you don’t hire a consultant to run your company. You interview a consultant, you take their advice, you throw out half of it, and then you turn to managers like Governor Romney to get the work done and to choose what needs to be done.”

HAMILTON COUNTY COMMISSIONER GREG HARTMANN: “Yes, sure, thank you. Thank you Congressman and Governor, this is Greg Hartmann, President of the Board of the Hamilton County Commissioners located in Cincinnati and an early supporter, and have been an early supporter of Governor Romney because we need a different kind of president to fix the economy—the broken economy [inaudible]. Mitt Romney didn’t get into government to get a job, he went to the private sector first and achieved incredible success there. And then turned those skills to government—and fixed Massachusetts, fixed the Olympics, and I think will offer that for the country and we really need it. We need in Ohio right now. We’ve struggled with jobs and the different kind of background that Mitt Romney brings to the table is one that we really need in the times we’re currently in. And looking at some of the other candidates, which I did before I made a decision on who to support, I have, I do have some concerns about Rick Santorum and mainly in the area of fiscal responsibility and fiscally, the question that came up to me about whether he’s a conservative or not. We have one candidate in the fall that is in the pockets of big labor and that’s our current president. And certainly the Republican Party does not need to nominate a candidate that really is in the same place. And his opposition to right-to-work tells a lot about where he is as a candidate and the main point on that for me is just the status quo is not working currently and we got to challenge what the labor unions have done and how much they tie our hands. In the county, it costs our general fund budget over a million dollars a year due to the collective bargaining units which we got to negotiate with and our hands are really tied with the laws that we got and the federal laws that we got to comply with. So, you know, I want to support a candidate that is open to look at a change in those laws to get our economy growing again. And that’s one of the problems we’ve got. And again, as well concerned about Rick Santorum’s position on earmarks. I’m opposed to that approach and think that one of the reasons we’ve had explosive spending. [Inaudible] Washington is broken and we need to first nominate someone who is not from Washington. Governor Romney is not from Washington, has never had a job in Washington, that actually came from the private sector [inaudible].”